


Snapshot

by twhitesakura (twsakura)



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:10:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twsakura/pseuds/twhitesakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A photograph captures a moment in time. Even after the dance is long over, the dancers live on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snapshot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [autumndynasty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumndynasty/gifts).



> Many thanks to Yele for the beta.

Thomas had a natural talent for dance. Even though he was still a child of twelve, he had the lanky limbs and grace of someone much older. In truth, he wasn’t very interested in ballet, but when the trustees offered him a full scholarship, his family leapt at the chance.

“Free room and board!” His mother enthused, while his two little sisters cornered him in their small apartment to beg for scraps of tulle and discarded fairy wings from the costume department.

The days passed uneventfully for Thomas at the academy. He was sometimes lonesome without his mother and siblings, but in class he was nimble and quick to master his _ballotté_. His teachers never knew Thomas’s studiousness wasn’t from love of dance or music, but for his family’s expectations. A few months passed at the academy, practicing _pirouette en dedans_ and _pirouette en dehors, _before he could fulfill his promise and sneak into the costume room one night after productions were over for the winter season.

He was pulling out ribbons and a pair of worn fairy wings from an old derelict trunk when they caught on a photograph frame. It came out, clattering onto the floor. Thomas pushed the chiffon away and held the frame in his hands. The photograph was faded, in black and white, purportedly the student cast of a “Spring Recital,” if the scribble at the bottom was to be believed. In one corner of the photo was the most curious girl in her school uniform, with the roundest eyes, the longest plait, the sweetest face, and a most unruly cowlick in her hair.

“Who’s that?” Thomas’s friend and classmate, Evan, elbowed him during lunch in the cafeteria. It was busy, full of students, and Evan had to repeat his question twice to be heard.

“I don’t know,” Thomas finally replied.

“And who’s this?” Evan asked, pointing at the surly-looking boy at the other end of photograph. He seemed to be glaring across the photo at the girl with the long plait.

“I don’t know,” Thomas said again, then furrowed his brow, snatching the photograph away from his friend’s hands.

Thomas asked the teachers, but only old Mr. Cat, who had been teaching at the academy for what seemed like forever, knew any of the students in the photograph.

“Ah, this was Mytho,” said Mr. Cat, pointing at the boy in the center of the photograph. He had the lightest snowiest hair, and the blankest expression Thomas had ever seen on a human being. “A great dancer. The girl next to him is Rue,” Mr. Cat continued, adjusting his glasses and pointing out a beautiful girl with long hair. “I think they went away to continue their studies abroad, I’m not sure where,” Mr. Cat mused, his eyes foggy with tried remembrance.

“What about him?” Thomas asked, jabbing at the grumpy-looking boy.

“That was Fakir,” Mr. Cat smiled sadly. “He gave up ballet.”

“And her?” Thomas continued, heart pounding as he pointed to the girl with the long braid.

“Her?” Mr. Cat mused to himself. “I’m afraid I don’t remember her. Perhaps I never had her as a student. Strange. I thought I taught at least one class with all the students back then.”

“Oh,” Thomas’s shoulders slumped in disappointment.

Mr. Cat smiled.

“You should ask Fakir,” Mr. Cat whispered conspiratorially. “He still lives in town, as a writer.”

Thomas went back home for the holidays, where he embraced his mother and his little sisters, although the latter more grudgingly. He had missed them terribly, but he wasn’t about to tell them. After answering nonstop questions about school from his family over his mother’s chocolate chip cookies, he got down to business.

“Fakir?” Thomas’s mother repeated. “Oh, you mean the writer. I’ve even read a few of his fairytales to you when you were younger. He’s the one that wrote that story about the swan.”

“It was all wrong!” Thomas’s sister, Elizabeth, interrupted from the bed where she was playing with their youngest sibling. “The swan doesn’t become a person. It’s the princess who’s cursed to be a swan. I bet he’s never even seen one performance of Swan Lake.”

Thomas’s youngest sister, Annie, nodded furiously from a pile of ribbons and tulle as haughtily as an Odette three times her age.

Thomas’s mouth twisted. “_I_ liked it.”

At this, Thomas’s mother laughed and kissed him on the head.

“Fakir lives by the pond on the outskirts of town,” Thomas’s mother soothed. “I’ll give you some muffins to bring to him tomorrow.”

That night, Thomas twisted and turned in his bed well into the evening, until Annie began to snore and day began to break. He watched the sunlight stream through the windows and fill the room’s white walls with color. He thought of the girl with the plait in the black and white photograph and filled her with color too.

It took him five attempts. Thomas finally knocked timidly on the door in front of him.

“What is it?!” A man bellowed from inside.

Thomas jumped and kept his gaze on the buckles on his shoes. “Um, I brought blueberry muffins from my mother.”

The door swung open with a creak, and two narrowed eyes looking over Thomas’s head slowly drew down to him. “A child.” One of the man’s eyebrows rose.

Flustered, Thomas thrust forward his basket of muffins and held out a note written from his mother.

The silver-haired man snatched the note away and read it briefly, his eyes slowly widening in comprehension. “Oh. Well come in then.”

The one-room cottage was cozy, full of manuscripts, quills, and opened bottles of ink. There were a few books on ballet, a copy of an opera strewn around the desk, a fireplace, and a generous low window that overlooked a small pond where a lone duck was swimming.

“Sit down,” the man ordered brusquely and went over to the stove to boil some tea.

Thomas plopped obediently onto the couch and the man looked over at him assessingly while he busied himself with extracting tea leaves from a tin container.

“You have your grandmother’s eyes,” the man said, then turned back to his task. “Your mother has very light eyes, but your grandmother – hers were as dark as raven feathers.”

“I never knew my grandmother.” Thomas clutched his hands on his lap. “She died when my mother was young.”

“Ah yes,” the man said, looking up with recollection. “She was a great ballerina. Even at the academy, the teachers knew she’d become something special.”

“You’re Mr. Fakir then?” Thomas ventured and pulled the knapsack off his back. After rummaging around in it, he pulled out the photograph. He indicated the surly boy and looked up at the equally surly man whose expression softened at the picture’s appearance.

“Where did you get this?” The man asked, coming over to Thomas.

Thomas handed it over and watched the man trace over the frame’s bronze edges reverently.

“It was in a beat-up costume trunk at school.”

The man gave the photograph back to Thomas. He then did a curious thing and walked over to the window. “Duck, come here.”

To Thomas’s surprise the bird stopped its swimming and did so with an answering quack, quickly waddling out of the pond to the window where the man scooped it up and brought it over the ledge and into the house.

The Duck shook itself dry on a woven rug and eyed Thomas curiously.

The kettle whistled then. The man poured three cups of tea and brought them over to the side table and sat in the chair across from Thomas. He set out a few plates for Thomas’s muffins and put the rest of the porcelain down.

“Yes, I’m Fakir,” the man confirmed and picked up a teacup with a faint curling rose motif, pink on its rim. After stirring two lumps of sugar into it and dutifully adding in a lemon slice, he set the cup on the floor.

The Duck waddled over.

“Do you know all of the students in the photograph?”

Thomas took his own cup, colored all over in soft sunflower-yellow. It was warm in his hands. He grabbed one of the muffins to munch on after making a face at the bitterness of the tea.

Fakir pushed the sugar bowl over to him, then leaned down to briefly run his fingers over the Duck’s back.

“Yes, I know them.”

“What about the girl in the corner?” Thomas leaned over eagerly, ignoring the sugar and setting down his tea to gesture at his girl with the braid. “What about her?

“Her?” Fakir smiled into his cup, a plain white color with a simple band of silver across its rim. “She was clumsy, naïve and a crybaby. Her name was Ahiru, and once upon a time she was Princess Tutu.”

“Tutu?” Thomas asked.

It had been Thomas’s favorite story as a child; Tutu the Swan that had transformed into a girl in order to help the Prince regain his lost heart, and who was even braver than the Prince’s Knight. Thomas’s sisters on the other hand, did not like the story very much, because in the end, the Prince never married Tutu but the not-so-evil witch instead, although she _had_ been very pretty. Anyway, Thomas’s sisters claimed, Princess Tutu was never a true Princess to begin with.

“Yes, Tutu.” Fakir smiled. “Certain facts have been changed as a matter of artistic license, but would you like to see a picture of her?”

“Yes!” Thomas blurted out. “I mean, yes, please.”

Fakir rose and went over to his desk. He pulled open one of its drawers with the large brass handles, and took out a book. In between its pages, carefully cradled with tissue paper, lay a rough colored pencil sketch of the girl with the long braid leaping in _grand jeté_. Only, the girl’s hair was gathered up differently and instead of a school uniform, she floated through the air in pink and white tulle with the strangest smile on her face. She had blue eyes.

“It’s not very good I’m afraid,” Fakir said, watching Thomas’s solemn face. “Mytho was much better at ballet than at drawing, but then again, he was much better than me at both.”

“I think it’s very good,” Thomas said, holding the sketch gingerly. “I think she’s very beautiful.”

At this, the Duck looked up from its tea and waddled to sit by Thomas’s feet, its head bowed as if in embarrassment.

“Oh, you do?” Fakir chuckled. “I think she’d have been pleased.”

“Would have?”

“Princess Tutu retired a long time ago. That girl no longer exists.”

“Oh,” Thomas’s mouth opened for a moment, then his face crumpled like a piece of newspaper.

“You can have the drawing if you’d like,” Fakir said kindly, looking outside the window at the darkening sky. “It’s getting late and you’d better get home.”

No response.

“We can talk more about Ahiru the next time you visit.”

“Really?!” Thomas exclaimed, clutching the sketch to his chest then hastily putting it down on the wooden table to smooth it out again. “Sorry! I’m sorry!”

“It’s fine.” Fakir chuckled. “Yes, come visit again. I think Princess Tutu would have liked that.”

From their doorstep, Fakir and the Duck watched as Thomas gave one last wave goodbye to them. Then the boy turned on the road and was gone. They stood in silence for a while, as the sky darkened further and the vibrant green fir trees were painted over with quiet blue shades.

“What do you think, Ahiru?” Fakir finally asked into the night sky.

There was nothing but wind for a moment, and then warmly, “Rue’s grandson is very sweet.”

The woman’s voice besides him was like two long human arms reaching out to cross over his shoulders. Fakir closed his eyes as the stars appeared, so piercing and brilliant against the darkness, and smiled.

“Yes, I think so too.”


End file.
